"I put a lot of stock on the ability to do an in-place upgrade
of my Linux/Unix desktops. And regarding upgrades from one
distribution to another, Debian is supposedly one of the best.
"You always hear about those hard-core geeks who have been
running the same box since Potato, dist-upgrading all the way to
whatever the current stable or testing distribution is at any given
moment.
"I've upgraded a stable Debian system to testing maybe once or
twice, usually in short order (i.e. installing stable and
immediately upgrading to testing).
"Yesterday I decided to upgrade my "production" Debian laptop,
which I've been using heavily since late last year, from Lenny
(stable) to Squeeze (testing). I thought it would be smooth and
easy.